Cylindrolobus | |
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Cylindrolobus sp. (Vietnam) | |
Scientific classification ![]() | |
Kingdom: | Plantae |
Clade: | Tracheophytes |
Clade: | Angiosperms |
Clade: | Monocots |
Order: | Asparagales |
Family: | Orchidaceae |
Subfamily: | Epidendroideae |
Tribe: | Podochileae |
Subtribe: | Eriinae |
Genus: | Cylindrolobus Blume |
Type species | |
Cylindrolobus compressus (Blume) Brieger (Blume) Brieger
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Synonyms[1] | |
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Cylindrolobus is a genus of orchids with about 80 species that grow in New Guinea, Wallacea, Southeast Asia, southern China, and India.[1]
These herbs are epiphytic, but also rarely terrestrial.[2] The elongate stems are slender and usually not pseudobulbous (though some species do possess a few terminal internodes, sometimes slightly swollen), with leaves along the entire length, except for some nodes at the base where persistent leaf sheaths have formed, or with some leaves towards the end/apex. The leathery leaves are alternate, conduplicate, and their shape can be linear-oblanceolate, or either narrowly elliptic or ovate. The leaves articulate to a sheathing base that tightly envelopes the stem. The usually short or slender inflorescences occur either laterally on many nodes or come from the terminal node of the stem, and have only 1 or 2-3 flowers. The peduncle is usually very much reduced. The few floral bracts are spirally arranged (in a few species they are conspicuous, brightly coloured and fleshy). The flowers are mostly coloured white or cream, though some species have ochre-yellow flowers. Flowers are medium-sized, glabrous (smooth) or with sparse stellate-hairs on the abaxial surface to the sepals. Pedicel and ovary are glabrous. Sepals vary, dorsally they are free, often recurved, while the lateral sepals are oblique at the base, forming with column foot a blunt oblique mentum. The petals are free and small than the sepals, their curved lip is three-lobed, hinged to a column foot, and adorned with a papillose, subglobose callus and either papillose keels or laminate keels. The lateral lobes are erect, and enclose the column. In most species the mid-lobe is smaller than lateral-lobes. The short column has a foot shorter than or about as long as the column proper. There are 8 rectangular pollinia, arranged in pair-series, a large and a small in each pair, with the posterior 4 are much smaller.
The few-flowered, glabrous axillary inflorescence is a diagnostic trait amongst sympodial taxa in the Epidendroideae subfamily p.p.[3]
The species of Cylindrolobus grow from New Guinea to Tropical Asia to south Zhōngguó/China. Countries and regions that members of the taxa grow in include: New Guinea, Lesser Sunda Islands, Maluku, Sulawesi, Philippines, Borneo, Java, Sumatra, Malaya, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar, Assam, East Himalaya, India, Tibet, and South Central China.